Your aunt has become an object of absolute hatred to her. I have combated successfully, as I hope and believe--this unchristian state of feeling.
"She is now beyond the reach of my influence. My purpose in writing is to beg you to continue the good work that I have begun. Compose this impetuous nature; restrain this fiery spirit. Your gentle influence, Carmina, has a power of its own over those who love you--and who loves you like Teresa?--of which perhaps you are not yourself aware. Use your power discreetly; and, with the blessing of God and his Saints, I have no fear of the result.
"Write to me, my child, when Teresa arrives--and let me hear that you are happier, and better in health. Tell me also, whether there is any speedy prospect of your marriage. If I may presume to judge from the little I know, your dearest earthly interests depend on the removal of obstacles to this salutary change in your life. I send you my good wishes, and my blessing. If a poor old priest like me can be of any service, do not forget.
"FATHER PATRIZIO."
Any lingering hesitation that Carmina might still have felt, was at an end when she read this letter. Good Father Patrizio, like good Mr. Mool, had innocently urged her to set her guardian's authority at defiance.
CHAPTER XL.
When the morning lessons were over, Carmina showed the priest's letter to Miss Minerva. The governess read it, and handed it back in silence.
"Have you nothing to say?" Carmina asked.
"Nothing. You know my opinion already. That letter says what I have said--with greater authority."
"It has determined me to follow your advice, Frances."
"Then it has done well."
"And you see," Carmina continued, "that Father Patrizio speaks of obstacles in the way of my marriage. Teresa has evidently shown him my letters. Do you think he fears, as I do, that my aunt may find some means of separating us, even when Ovid comes back?"
"Very likely."
She spoke in faint weary tones--listlessly leaning back in her chair. Carmina asked if she had passed another sleepless night.
"Yes," she said, "another bad night, and the usual martyrdom in teaching the children. I don't know which disgusts me most--Zoe's impudent stupidity, or Maria's unendurable humbug."
She had never yet spoken of Maria in this way. Even her voice seemed to be changed. Instead of betraying the usual angry abruptness, her tones coldly indicated impenetrable contempt. In the silence that ensued, she looked up, and saw Carmina's eyes resting on her anxiously and kindly.
"Any other human being but you," she said, "would find me disagreeable and rude--and would be quite right, too. I haven't asked after your health. You look paler than usual. Have you, too, had a bad night?"
"I fell asleep towards the morning. And--oh, I had such a delightful dream! I could almost wish that I had never awakened from it."
"Who did you dream of?" She put the question mechanically--frowning, as if at some repellent thought suggested to her by what she had just heard.
"I dreamed of my mother," Carmina answered.
Miss Minerva raised herself at once in the chair. Whatever that passing impression might have been, she was free from it now. There was some little life again in her eyes; some little spirit in her voice. "Take me out of myself," she said; "tell me your dream."
"It is nothing very remarkable, Frances. We all of us sometimes see our dear lost ones in sleep. I saw my mother again, as I used to see her in the nursery at bedtime--tall and beautiful, with her long dark hair failing over her white dressing-gown to the waist. She stooped over me, and kissed me; and she looked surprised. She said, 'My little angel, why are you here in a strange house? I have come to take you back to your own cot, by my bedside.' I wasn't surprised or frightened; I put my arms round her neck; and we floated away together through the cool starry night; and we were at home again. I saw my cot, with its pretty white curtains and pink ribbons. I heard my mother tell me an English fairy story, out of a book which my father had given to her--and her kind voice grew fainter and fainter, while I grew more and more sleepy--and it ended softly, just as it used to end in the happy old days. And I woke, crying. Do you ever dream of your mother now?"
"I? God forbid!"
"Oh, Frances, what a dreadful thing to say!"
"Is it? It was the thought in me, when you spoke. And with good reason, too. I was the last of a large family--the ugly one; the ill-tempered one; the encumbrance that made it harder than ever to find money enough to pay the household expenses. My father swore at my mother for being my mother. She reviled him just as bitterly in return; and vented the rest of her ill-temper on my wretched little body, with no sparing hand. Bedtime was her time for beating me. Talk of your mother--not of mine! You were very young, were you not, when she died?"
"Too young to feel my misfortune--but old enough to remember the sweetest woman that ever lived. Let me show you my father's portrait of her again. Doesn't that face tell you what an angel she was? There was some charm in her that all children felt. I can just remember some of my playfellows who used to come to our garden. Other good mothers were with us--but the children all crowded round my mother. They would have her in all their games; they fought for places on her lap when she told them stories; some of them cried, and some of them screamed, when it was time to take them away from her. Oh, why do we live! why do we die! I have bitter thoughts sometimes, Frances, like you. I have read in poetry that death is a fearful thing. To me, death is a cruel thing,--and it has never seemed so cruel as in these later days, since I have known Ovid. If my mother had but lived till now, what happiness would have been added to my life and to hers! How Ovid would have loved her--how she would have loved Ovid!"
Miss Minerva listened in silence. It was the silence of true interest and sympathy, while Carmina was speaking of her mother. When her lover's name became mingled with the remembrances of her childhood--the change came. Once more, the tell-tale lines began to harden in the governess's face. She lay back again in her chair. Her fingers irritably platted and unplatted the edge of her black apron.
Carmina was too deeply absorbed in her thoughts, too eagerly bent on giving them expression, to notice these warning signs.
"I have all my mother's letters to my father," she went on, "when he was away from her on his sketching excursions, You have still a little time to spare--I should so like to read some of them to you. I was reading one, last night--which perhaps accounts for my dream? It is on a subject that interests everybody. In my father's absence, a very dear friend of his met with a misfortune; and my mother had to prepare his wife to hear the bad news--oh, that reminds me! There is something I want to say to you first."
"About yourself?" Miss Minerva asked.
"About Ovid. I want your advice."
Miss Minerva was silent.